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The saga of health of Steve Jobs and the rumors surrounding his condition are back, as the Apple CEO had just announced that he will be taking a six-month leave of absence from his post at the helm of Apple. COO Tim Cook will handle day-to-day operations at the company while Jobs is gone. All this, after Steve handed the MacWorld keynote slot to Phil Schiller, and even went on to post that his health was under control. In a note to Apple, Steve Jobs made it known that he had just learned that his health issues are a little more “complex” than first diagnosed.

You can find that letter below - we just hope that Steve gets back to good health quickly, and actually does return to his usual role as Apple CEO. However, something tells us that he may not be back. Of course, we hope we are wrong.

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my
health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

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Uh-oh, this one can’t be good for AMD. After AMD’s latest chip release was met by disappointment by the benchmarking crowd, some were kind of bummed out about waiting for the new Phenoms. Then, just a few days ago, the company vowed to cut their workforce by 10% by September after lowering their Q1 sales expectations. Now, we have even worse news, as AMD CTO Phil Hester has voluntarily resigned from his position. MarketWatch says he is doing this to “persue other opportunities,” which is what we hear from just about any high-level exec who suddenly decides to leave a company. No word yet on who his replacement will be - in fact, AMD says he won’t be replaced. Um, what?

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Sony Computer Entertainment UK head of sales Kevin Jowett has left Sony for unannounced reasons. SCE UK stated that Jowett had left the company to “pursue new opportunities outside of the industry.” Jowett’s departure is interesting in that it comes mere weeks before Sony’s European launch of the Playstation 3; the effect of his departure will likely be unknown until after the launch happens. Given that the sales roadmap has likely been set for quite a while now, it is unlikely that any major changes will happen, but it sounds like Jowett worked closely with a number of Sony’s retail partners and a change in that relationship could potentially have a huge impact.

Even with a strong launch and a significant amount of buzz, it’s still too early to say that Nintendo will necessarily become a favorite of third-party publishers. If today’s news is any indication, though, they’ve definitely made some headway. Yesterday, Rockstar Games (yes, THAT Rockstar Games of GTA fame) announced that they will be producing Manhunt 2 for the PSP, PS2, and Wii. While Manhunt definitely isn’t the best game Rockstar’s ever produced, this might mark the company’s first baby-steps towards producing more games for Nintendo’s consoles. Similarly, Activition recently announced strong support for the Wii, including a version of Guitar Hero that will likely be tailored to take advantage of Nintendo’s motion-sensitive Wiimote. From the company conference call:

The key difference in our strategy versus the prior cycle, is that in addition to full support on Sony and Microsoft platforms, we will aggressively target the Nintendo platforms consistent with our multi-platform strategy and Nintendo’s expected growth. In fiscal 2008, we will double our offerings on the DS and the Wii, including Spider-Man, Shrek, Transformers, and Guitar Hero.

With production costs for “truly” next-gen titles on the Xbox 360 and PS3 skyrocketing, it’ll be interesting to see if studios decide that they can make more money producing content for Nintendo’s fledgling console.